Ciphergram Solution Assistant

Solves, or nearly solves, ciphergrams like those in the newspapers that
are called cryptoquotes: simple substitution ciphers.

A ciphergram is a (short) message that has been transformed by a so-called
simple substitution cipher. The well known Caesar shift is one
of these, wherein the ciphertext is made from the plaintext by
substituting for each letter the one three places to the right in the
alphabet, modulo 26: A becomes D, Y becomes B, M becomes P, and so on.

The Ciphergram Solution Assistant makes these assumptions about the
cipher:

No cipher letter may stand for itself in the plaintext.
(But see below, about Enforce the Rule.)
Each cipher letter stands for a unique plaintext letter, and each
plaintext letter stands for a unique cipher letter (1:1 mapping).
The spacing and punctuation of the plaintext is preserved.
The plaintext is spelled correctly throughout.

WARNING! The results of the Ciphergram Solution Assistant are not
guaranteed or warranted in any way. These results should NOT be used as
the basis of any commercial contract, obligation, or transaction.
The form below is filled in with an example. To try it, click
Solve.

To try a problem of your own, delete the contents of the form. Then,
enter the enciphered message, enter the enciphered attribution, and click
Solve. Please read the Help pages
if you have trouble with this.

The Ciphergram Solution Assistant will do the best it can to solve the
ciphergram. It usually comes close to the intended answer, with at most a
few wrong letters.

You should leave the Initial Key box empty at first.
Please read the Hints page for
more about the Initial Key box.

Enforce the Rule button:
Unless you are sure you want to relax the rule that requires cipher
characters not to stand for themselves in plaintext, you should leave the
Enforce the Rule button checked. The CryptoQuote puzzles
in the newspapers obey the rule.

If you get an error message, or the results don't make sense to you, please
read the Error Messages page.

Log Policy

This page maintains a log of entered data and returned results. The log data
is treated as confidential, and is used only to debug and improve the page.
The oldest data in the log is purged regularly to keep its size reasonably
small.

Ciphergram

Attribution

Initial Key

Identity Rule

Enforce the Rule

(Cipher character may not represent itself)

Don't enforce the Rule

See the download page for
source code for the CSA for both Windows and Unix.

The Windows download includes a ready-to-run executable which
was built from the sources.